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Prayer

What exactly did you see, Pablo, when–ripped
–the sky opened and revealed to you its bowels
of planets and plantation? What precisely
did you find, Allen, the day it rained of sun
-flowers and Bill spoke to you of tigers burning
and thundering? What was it like to stop
hearing Love’s voice, Villa, and wrestling
with God head to head? To question accuracies
of visions, hallucinations, talking to the dead,
do words, their true grave, have the answers?
I went back to the basics of prayer: the bible,
a black book of verses fat with loosened leaves,
sweet angels of Ramadan, an empty room save
for a bed and a glass of water. Walter learned
in the dark the secrets of atoms and of grass,
of love, of boys, and of marching drums. Am I
doing this right? Kneeling before rosary,
saying my Hail Mary fifty times a day, six days
in a week, asking her, hey, holy mother of god,
is this prayer poetry, or every poetry a prayer?

—Jeffrey Javier received his BA in English (Creative Writing) from UP Mindanao. He was a fellow for poetry at both the Silliman University National Writers Workshop and the Iligan Writers Workshop.